• The heavenly choir of screams wakened him out of his reverie, as hazel eyes returned to the matter at hand. Flames pillaged the city eagerly, taking what they could and destroying what they couldn’t. The sky itself was twisted into an ugly gray color, smoke rising above, away from the terror that the humans found themselves unable to escape. Blood ran in rivers, washing the streets clean of dirt and grime, leaving behind a lovely sheen of red. The humans, though, ahh – they were the greatest part in this entire melodrama of calamity. As their temples of power and money came tumbling down, they were reverted again to the mindless animals that they had descended from, tearing one another apart simply to survive. Brother and brother knew each other not; for all their instinct, mothers abandoned their children in their direst hour of need, scrambling away from the Night-black monster that would swallow them whole if the stone ground was suddenly empty of their sounds.

    Horatio saw none of this.

    No, in his hazel-colored world, there was only majesty to behold in the spectacle being held before his very eyes. There was brilliance and cunning in the intricate way he had managed to twine Fate’s threads together so delicately… and then rip right through them. Even with his odd manner of appearance, he was instantly marked out in such a crowd. While others were scrambling with panic and running for their lives, Horatio walked calmly amongst the wreckage. His olive-green trench coat fluttered about his heels, his leather boots making a soft clip-clop against the hard pavement. He wore black pants beneath a coat that buttoned up to his neck where it was left in a loose ‘v’ around the hollow of his throat. Soft, ivory hair was clipped short against his skull, delicate as a dog’s newborn fur. His hazel eyes were hidden beneath tawny-hued glasses, resting atop the bridge of a sharply-cut nose that split his face in half. His skin was the shade of old sheaves of paper – not yet so wrinkled, however. No, his skin was smooth and marked with experience, but not with age. This was Horatio, and this was his opera. He paused, a queer smile curling his lips as he gazed upon the terror of it all.

    “Chaos, panic, and disorder...” The man sighed with contentment. “My work here is done.” All that was left for him now was to sit back, relax, and enjoy the—

    A sharp tine scored a groove along the inside of his skull and jerked him downwards, shoulders slumped back as he scraped along the brick wall that would soon collapse and become another pile of rubble… that is, if Horatio had his way. His way, however, had not included any sort of interference. The hazel-eyed man straightened and stood once more calmly as he carefully pocketed his hands, staring up into the smoke-black sky. So… the Protector had come after all. Turning his head one way and then the other, Horatio cracked his neck and stepped forward with a spring in his stride, heading into the heart of the flames for where tragedy was ripest there would Nathan be, using his goodness to save some poor souls from the devastation of Horatio’s brilliance…

    How rude, thought Horatio.

    It wasn’t enough that the Brotherhood had bound him in chains of ivory, iron, and wood for their thousand-year reign. Time went by no faster for his kind, and in prison it had crawled at a snail’s leisurely pace. No food, no water, nothing… nothing but the four blank walls of his cage. It wasn’t enough that it had taken the souls of twenty-four demons to free him again, all lured in by the subtle shifts in the air and the bare whispers of his mind. To say the least, it had been quite a task doing so in a mental straightjacket. A month to regain the use of his limbs, a year to regain the full use of his own mind… No, no! It wasn’t quite enough to satisfy the world’s cruel mistress, that hellish hellion called Fate. No… In the end, the Protector himself had been called upon to crash his party.

    Dealing with angels was a bad enough headache on a good day, but today, Big Brother himself had to come down and stop the celebrations. Horatio growled softly in his throat, his curling lips turning the guttural sound to a soft croon. Oh, Nathan, Nathan… you big lummox, you! The man skirted about a bloody puddle with an almost cheerful step. There, through the smoke, through the fire and screams… Eamnonn, the Protector. Did he have to be so beautiful? Horatio’s breath was stolen away by that face that was cut from marble, those eyes a night-sky violet that glimmered in the softest light. Don’t look at those hay-hued locks that curled ever so perfectly and framed his chiseled features, they would break your heart. A long, loose tunic did him little justice, but Horatio didn’t need his eyes to see the magnificently sculpted body beneath it, no… he knew it well enough by memory to see it, to smell it, to feel it again beneath his fingertips…

    The daydream ended swiftly as another building collapsed with a great peal like thunder and Nathan’s eyes swung in Horatio’s direction. Those violet eyes held him in contempt for a single moment before clouding over and vanishing any heat in them, malevolent or otherwise. He stepped forward in a show of challenge, raising his spear to rest over his shoulder. Horatio planted his feet and squared his shoulders, crossing his arms in front of him to regard Nathan coolly over his tawny-colored glasses.

    “Eamnonn, Protector of the Laws and Compassion, have the Bright Ones really run so low on support that they called upon you to clean up their mess?” He taunted quietly, and his voice was a thing to marvel over. It crawled across the skin, slithered quietly down your spine and wrapped around one’s heart with the icy grip of the damned. Nathan’s eyes narrowed.

    “Aenos, fallen and fiend, this is no one’s mess but yours.” Nathan’s voice was like blackbirds and thunder, storming through the blood and leaving sparks in its wake. He cut through the air with his spear and held it out accusingly at Horatio. “This tragedy is upon your shoulders, little brother.”

    Horatio clicked his tongue at his opposite, and shook his head in apparent shame. Long, leisurely strides began to take him in a lazy circle around Nathan. “Drop the dead title, Eamnonn; you renounced me ages ago when you decided to stand with the Bright Ones. I am Their mess, and in that same spirit, I am yours, O Most Holy of Janitors.” Horatio laughed darkly as he swept a quite dramatic bow.

    Horatio suddenly leapt back, hissing at the bright angel and his outstretched spear that crackled with the force of a holy spell. There was a crater before the snow-haired demon the size of his head that might’ve been his head had he not reacted so quickly. “b*****d!” Horatio shrieked, but Nathan only held his gaze steadily. There was the barest hint of a shrug in his covered shoulders.

    “By birth, perhaps – but unlike you, Aenos, not by temperament.”

    “Temper? TEMPER?!” Horatio snarled, his lips pulled back to bare his grinding teeth. “The only sort of temper I have ever had, brother, was the contempt for you and those damned Idiots upstairs!”

    Human eyes did not have the capability to see how quickly Nathan surged forward, his spear hungering for a fatal wound but the snow-haired man leapt away on limbs that he did not have, skittering away from Nathan’s attack only to narrowly escape another blow, his liquid dance barely enough to keep him alive under his brother’s fury. Nathan’s violet eyes raged viciously, both hands gripping his spear in a deadly grip. Certainly, he was the virtuous one and he had come to fix this mess as best he could; he did not come here to kill Aenos… but the Bright Ones forgive him if they expected the Protector to stand idly by while this disgusting wretch dared to besmirch Their name!

    The blunt end of Nathan’s spear caught Horatio under the chin, and the man went flying backwards, his trench coat’s tails flapping wildly before his harsh stop on the concrete, the cement cracking beneath the force of his fall with dust blowing up into the air. The Protector leapt forward, spear raised, seeking to end it for once and for all when Horatio’s booted feet popped up from the ground, striking Nathan squarely in the middle and knocking the wind out from his lungs. They rolled together and a lucky punch forced Nathan’s spear from his hands but neither was less powerful without weapons, no, far from it… if anything, they were more savage. They wrestled on the ground and through the flames that harmed them none. A vicious kick in a most tender area left Nathan gasping, and an equally cruel head-butt from the angelic one broke Horatio’s glasses and nose all at the same time. They scrambled to their feet and fell again, toppling the other after overcoming defeat again and again and again. They were too evenly matched, Aenos and Eamnonn, and in such a setting, their kinship was rigidly defined.

    Horatio clawed at Nathan’s face, his fingers finding and grasping his jaw and pulled downward at a terrible speed. Something cracked and Nathan moaned as they rolled again, his knee jabbing into his little brother’s ribs when his head came crashing down on the pavement again. Another sickening crack and Nathan’s jaw was pushed back into place, immediately closing on Horatio’s fingers. The fallen screamed as his blood flowed into Nathan’s mouth. Pulling fiercely, Horatio snarled furiously as his hand came away with only three of the fingers it had boasted before. Spitting out the two lumps of flesh, the Protector did not sit idly by and wrapped his strong arms around Horatio’s neck, pulling him up while pushing into his back with his knee. Horatio choked and gasped for breath, his eyes blinking away the dust that flew up around them. Sweat and blood mingled and trickled down his face, and though he could not claim to be without a scratch, Nathan was in no better state. Still, unlike Horatio, Nathan could claim the upper hand for the moment.

    He jerked upwards, and the snow-haired fiend’s hands flew up to grasp Nathan’s arm, pulling on it uselessly as his bloody stumps ruined his grip. “Give it up, Aenos!” He barked. “Renounce it all, and come back to the Bright Ones – come back to us!”

    Blood climbed the cracks between his teeth, but he bared them in a sordid smile nonetheless. “N-Never!” With that one fierce word, Nathan was thrown back as droplets of blood and scraps of sinew rained down upon them. Horatio stumbled to his feet, smoke rising from behind him. He stood trembling, his body framed by membranous wings black as sin and sticky with his blood. With slow, deliberate movements, Horatio unbuttoned his trench coat and let it slip from his shoulders. It tumbled to the ground in tatters, anyhow.

    Nathan rose slowly, eyeing the fallen warily.

    “I will never be a slave again, Eamnonn – not yours, and not Theirs. You hear me?” He raised one bloody hand, two raw stumps pointing accusingly at him. “Never again.”

    Thus, like the thunder must follow the lightning, the battle raged on.